Beyond Iraq: The Socioeconomic Trajectories of Private Military Veterans

Through the lens of veterans studies, we know a great deal about the fate of those soldiers who have recently returned home following a period of deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan, yet counterintuitively we know nothing about the plight of the private military contractors who worked alongside them. Addressing this blind spot, the article explores the socioeconomic trajectories of “private military veterans” from a life-course perspective. Specifically, it addresses three questions regarding their status in the civilian labor market. What occupations do they work in? To what extent do they work in similar occupations to public military veterans? To what extent do they work in similar occupations to the general population? Focusing on the U.K. case, it reveals that private military veterans are significantly overrepresented in the “protective service occupations,” where they primarily work in the private security industry, and offers a multilayered explanation for this distinctive clustering effect.